Supreme Court Filings for May 19, 2017

The Kansas Supreme Court released the following published decision today:

A unanimous Supreme Court affirmed the summary denial of Bailey's motions to correct an illegal sentence and release restitution. In an opinion written by Justice Caleb Stegall, the court held Bailey's sentence is not illegal because his offenses were correctly classified as person felonies. However, the court determined that no enforceable restitution judgment exists against Bailey, and the wrongful collection of restitution likely arose from a clerical error. Therefore, the court remanded to Johnson County District Court for a hearing and correction of the clerical error.

A Shawnee County jury convicted Davis of 10 counts for the kidnapping and killing of 8-year-old A.I., among them two alternative counts of capital murder based on either the rape or kidnapping, an alternative count of premeditated first-degree murder, and rape. On appeal, Davis challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to prove premeditation, two alleged prosecutorial errors in closing argument, a district court judge's decision to allow the jury to consider the statement he made to police, an alleged jury instruction error, and the multiplicity of his rape conviction.

The Supreme Court agreed with Davis that the prosecutor committed error twice during closing argument, first by telling the jury that "you don’t spend the rest of your life in prison unless you've killed," and then by misstating the evidence about Davis' consumption of drugs, but the errors were harmless and did not require reversal of Davis' convictions. The court also agreed with Davis that his conviction for capital murder for the rape of A.I. and his separate conviction for the rape of A.I. were multiplicitous, because rape is an element of the capital murder conviction. The court otherwise rejected Davis' arguments and affirmed the district court's judgments, with the exception of the rape conviction, which the court reversed. Davis is, in effect, already being punished for the rape, because it is an element of the capital murder conviction.Kansas Court of Appeals decisions released today